📌 RTI Law Turned On Its Head!

(from the archives)

A combination of intimidation and mindless application of the letter of the law threatens to dissuade citizens from putting the RTI Act to use. And politicians are only happy to offer solutions that further dilute the law's purpose. Suman Sahai and Swati Gola note examples from Chhatisgarh that point to the need for a program for rights literacy.

Recently, BBC News carried a feature reporting the prohibitive cost of obtaining information through the Right to Information (RTI) Act in India. A farmer in Chattisgarh who had asked for information on paddy purchases in his area was given a bill of Rs.1,82,000 for costs that were allegedly incurred for photocopying the official documents relating to the purchases. The documents filled an entire room. In another incident, a resident of Bilaspur district, Chattisgarh was told to pay Rs.75,000 for information he had requested on the positions available for schoolteachers.

The village council official of Bilaspur said that they did not have the money to provide information to people. In Chattisgarh, a person who demands information has to pay Rs.2 for every photocopied page of official documents. Authorities say that ever since the law was passed, the poor have risen to demand information from the government but the government does not have money to supply it. The Chief Minister of Chattisgarh has stated that well-to-do people are using the poor to get information free from the government (the fees are waived for the poor below the poverty line). He urged that the law be changed to allow the officials to examine whether the requested information is useful for the person asking for it.

It is not hard to see that the applicant was seeking the status and availability of the positions for schoolteachers. What, then, motivated him to photocopy the application forms of 9000 candidates, and bill the petitioner for this mindless act?

These incidents should not have happened. They are geared to defeat the purpose of the RTI Act, which is essentially to introduce transparency in governance and to check corruption. These actions can be attributed to one of two reasons. The first, a deliberate attempt to intimidate those seeking information so that misdeeds and corruptions are not exposed. The second, which is far more likely: that there is lack of familiarity with the law and no application of mind to the provisions of law in order to enable people to access information.

• A huge bill has been handed over to a poor farmer whereas it is clearly provided under proviso to S. 7 (6) of RI Act that the fee shall be reasonable and information should be provided for free to persons who are living below the poverty line. Thus the act of State Public Information Officer is in clear contravention of the provisions of the law.
• The information officer is required under S. 7(3) of the RTI Act to intimate the applicant how much it will cost to prove the information alongwith the calculations made to arrive at the amount. He is further required to inform the applicant of his/her right to review the decision regarding the amount of fees charged or the form of access provided as well as the particulars of the appellate authority. Instead of applying his mind, the SPIO has handed over an enormous bill running into lakhs of rupees to a poor farmer. This is in clear violation of the legal provision.
• The law gives ample discretion to the Central or State Public Information Officer under S. 7(9) to assess whether the form in which the information is sought would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority. Accordingly the SPIO should have sought clarification from the applicant as to what particular information he/she wished to have. He should have facilitated the applicant’s request for information and intervened if the information sought was unclear and would result in bulk copying of documents. Instead of providing a stack of photocopies without application of mind to its relevance and which resulted in avoidable expenditure of public resources, the applicant should have been guided and informed of the expenditure and be given the alternative to inspect the files and file notings and then take the photocopies of only the most relevant portions.
• The claim of the official that the government has no money to provide the information is inadmissible and holds no ground. The cost of photocopying an official document is charged at Rs2/- page, which is not a reasonable amount. Photocopy machines are already installed in government departments and can be used at nominal cost. Even if the photocopying is done at a commercial establishment, the costs vary from 50-75 paise per page at the most.

The proposal of the Chattisgarh government to seek changes in the RTI Act that will allow officials to determine whether the information sought is ‘useful’ to the applicant is absurd, and could be judged to be malafide. The RTI Act was legislated after a great deal of debate and discussion within civil society and with officials and government departments. The result is a consensus legislation, which has at its core good governance to enable development from the grassroots up in a functional democracy. Instead of trying to derail the Act, the Chattisgarh government would do well to educate itself and train its officials to interpret and implement the law so as to achieve its goal.

Providing a stack of non-relevant information and handing over a bill close to two lakh rupees is not only a waste of public resources but appears to be a tactic to deny information and deter others from seeking information from the government. If the intention of the government official was infact to provide relevant information, it is not hard to see that the applicant was seeking the status and availability of the positions for schoolteachers. What, then, motivated him to photocopy the application forms of 9000 candidates for the post, and bill the petitioner for this mindless act?

The objective of the RTI Act is to improve transparency in public working but the incidents mentioned above reveal the resistance of the bureaucracy to open their functioning to scrutiny. They are unwilling to provide information, and when they have to they resort to creating hurdles by senseless application of provisions of the Act. These incidents underline the great need for a public information campaign to engender a rights literacy program so that the public can become aware of its rights and have full knowledge of the legal provisions through which it can exercise its rights.

This article appeared in India Together on 13 June 2006 -https://indiatogether.org/letterlaw-rti/

📍World Rivers Day (27 Sept 26)

Given the way nature is being degraded in the name of “development”, a movement has begun across the world claiming that Nature has Rights like people do. Included in this movement is the backing for the Right of Rivers. 

The Universal Declaration of River Rights says that rivers have :

• The Right to flow unhindered along their natural course.
• The Right to maintain their ecosystem functions and the health of their habitats.
• The Right to maintain and preserve the diversity of their flora and fauna
• The Right to be protected from pollution, and
• The Legal Right to be restored from their damaged state.

On this World Rivers Day, let us affirm the Right of Rivers and commit ourselves to the protection of this life giving resource without which survival on this planet would not be possible.

📍 Space Pharma: Making Drugs in Space

Shooting things into space is no longer just about rockets, satellites and launch vehicles or Chandrayaan and SpaceX and so on. There is a space frenzy and the newest happening thing is Space Pharma – the manufacturing of drugs and medicines in space. Earnings from the space economy are projected to be huge. Market professionals are anticipating that it could surpass $1 trillion by 2040. While settled industries like semiconductors and fiber-optic cables will be the biggest earners, Space Pharma is emerging as a significant player.

A number of precision drugs like monoclonal antibodies, steroids, antibiotics among many others, may now be coming from space. A number of pharmaceutical companies in recent times have been heading straight to the lower orbit of the earth to manufacture medicines. So what is the reason for going all that distance, you may ask, why not continue to produce drugs on earth as always? The answer is Microgravity. Microgravity is the state when the pull of gravity is not very strong since gravitational force gets weaker when objects are far apart. This microgravity condition is very enabling for the pharmaceutical sector as we shall see.

When pharmaceutical products are manufactured on earth, they face challenges from the force of gravity. How? because of a process called sedimentation when heavy particles settle below and smaller, lighter particles float on top. This disrupts the drug synthesis process because the mixture of compounds that goes into making a drug remains uneven. Fluids sink, making the mixture uneven. Unevenly distributed particles in compositions create problems

with dosage.

In space however, there is very low gravitational force, or micro gravity where the distortions created by gravitational force are cancelled. Better drugs can be manufactured in space by taking advantage of the microgravity conditions in low-Earth orbit. This enables the synthesis of more precise complex biological molecules and purer, more uniform protein crystals.

When molecules are more uniform, they become easier to administer to patients, When crystals are a mix of different sizes, small crystals hide in the gaps of larger ones, making the liquid thicker, more viscous. This matters because viscosity determines the efficiency with which patients absorb the medicine. Viscous injectable medicines are painful to administer, when viscosity is lowered, complex mixtures become lighter and less painful to take. 

The United States is the world leader in commercial space-based drug manufacturing and is already establishing supply chains. The US is followed by the UK which is trying to capture a dominant share of the European space-pharma market. Third in line is India a new player in the space-pharma arena.

Serendipity Space is the name of India’s first dedicated Space Pharma start-up operating out of Bhubaneshwar. The company is building satellites to manufacture pharmaceutical compounds in orbit so that drug crystals can be manufactured in microgravity. These will be brought back to produce purer forms of medicines than are possible on Earth. A futuristic, new sector is developing in medicines and it is wonderful to know that India is a major player.

📌 Deforestation On Ground, Afforestation On Paper!

South Asia is among the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions. Rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, droughts and extreme weather are already threatening water, agriculture and food security. The World Bank warns that climate change could sharply reduce living conditions for hundreds of millions of South Asians.

In such a situation, expanding and protecting green cover should be a national climate priority. Yet the CAG’s latest audit of the Green India Mission tells a disturbing story. Against a target of 1.4 million hectares of additional forest cover, only about 0.03 million hectares was achieved between 2015–16 and 2024–25. Resulting into a shortfall of approx. 98% (https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/green-india-mission-fell-short-by-98-in-increasing-forest-cover-cag-11912065). This should ideally be read a 100% only you know.

The Hasdeo-Arand landscape in Chhattisgarh is a particularly stark example. In June 2026, the environment ministry granted in-principle forest clearance for diversion of 1,742.6 hectares for the Kente Extension coal block, followed by environmental clearance later that month. The proposed Great Nicobar Island infrastructure project involves an integrated transshipment terminal, airport, township and associated development across a large area. Government documents record an in-principle approval for diversion of 130.75 sq km of forest land.

Moreover, between April 2023 and March 2026, 71,023 hectares of forest land was approved for diversion to non-forest purposes across the country. The reality it seems is that we are failing to create forests while continuing to sacrifice existing ones. Planting saplings cannot compensate for destroying mature, biodiverse natural forests. Climate policy must begin with protecting the forests we already have.

📌 Climate Impact on Forests!

The rich, natural forests of India were brought under “modern, scientific” forestry by the British in 1864. And with that the Indian tradition of seeing the forest as a community resource to be conserved and used sustainably was jettisoned. In its place came the commercial exploitation of the forest by the colonial rulers. Natural mixed forests used freely by locals for their personal needs and for incomes were replaced by commercial monocultures like teak, pine, and sal which were owned by the British.

Colonial exploitation of the forest was reversed when the Forest Rights Act, 2006 was enacted. This Act recognized that Adivasi and tribal communities as well as other traditional forest dwellers have the legal right to own, collect, use and sell minor forest produce, collectively known as Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) NTFPs include tendu leaves used for rolling bidis, mahua flowers and seeds, wild fruits and nuts, honey, tamarind, medicinal plants, herbs, bamboo and a variety of edible and useful forest products. For Adivasi and other forest-dwelling communities, these products have traditionally been part of their food, livelihoods and everyday lives.

But climate change is beginning to interfere with the seasonal and ecological processes on which these resources depend. A change in rainfall is affecting flowering so availability of Mahua flowers gets affected. Rising temperatures affect fruiting and seed production. Drought can reduce the availability of edible plants and wild fruits. Changes in temperature and moisture also affect major NTFPs such as honey and lac which are significant income sources for the tribal communities and forest dwellers.

These changes are already being felt .The forest may still be standing. Its canopy may even appear unchanged. But if the flowers do not bloom as before, if fruits become scarce, or if seasonal forest produce becomes unreliable, then the forest is no longer the livelihood supporting resource it used to be.

📌 Engineering Crops, Distorting Trade!

(from the archives)

When technological change has the potential to put the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people at risk, it must be regulated differently from other products in a free market. Blindly promoting innovation, as is now being done with genetically engineered crops, is self-defeating, writes Suman Sahai.

Many crops of developing countries have a global value because of the special chemical compounds they contain like aromatic or other oils. In recent years, however, biotechnology and agribusiness companies have found ways of obtaining some of these valuable compounds through genetically engineered (GE) crops. As a result, genetic engineering is providing alternative ways for developed societies to procure commodities that have traditionally been supplied by developing countries. Naturally, the shift in trading patterns threatens the economic base of farmers who have traditionally grown the crops from which these products were made.

The production of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) from corn, a major GE crop bred for industrial applications like this, has undermined sugar prices and distorted sugar markets for cane sugar producers of developing countries like India. Coconut is another victim of genetic engineering. Coconut provides high value oil used for edible and for industrial purposes. The main advantage of this oil is the high lauric acid that it contains. The US alone imports upwards of US$ 350 million worth of coconut and palm oil annually. Now genetic engineering is creating GE canola to produce the same special high lauric acid oil as coconut. This research will have highly negative economic implications for farmers in coconut producing regions.

Technology alone is not responsible; these changes are made possible by massive agricultural subsidies in the developed world for corporate farming. These are a source of grave distortion in international agricultural trade, accelerating the changes created by new technologies.

Calgene has produced a high lauric acid rapeseed by using genes from the California Bay tree. This rapeseed will ultimately displace the coconut and palm kernel oil and deprive Asian farmers of revenues. The argument that coconut farmers could nevertheless derive some income from other coconut products is weak - there are great difficulties that developing country farmers confront in finding new markets for their crops. The loss of the coconut oil income, the farmers’ principal revenue opportunity in certain regions, will inflict severe economic hardship.

Intellectual Property Rights

Access to GE technology is largely impeded by the stringent IPRs that surround it. Most of the basic technologies of genetic engineering are patented and the larger companies own these patents. These companies are reluctant to license many technologies to developing country organisations at an affordable cost. Patent laws do not require them to do so, so they are not obliged to grant any licenses if they prefer to control the technology themselves. Patent holders often refuse to license patents for key technologies to scientists and even to public sector institutions. Also, companies often seek patents not necessarily to conduct research themselves but to prevent research in areas that would threaten their monopolies. It is of concern that public research institutions are also getting into the patenting of plant technologies and research tools, further restricting access to genetic material and research data that are needed to cross complement research efforts.

Patents with an excessively broad claim are becoming increasingly problematic. They violate the ethical intent of patent law, which is to balance private gain with public good, while leaving the way open for further innovation. Excessively broad claims like the one granted to Monsanto on ‘all types of genetic transformation in all varieties of soybean’ (European Patent Number 301,749), are contrary to the original intention of patent law. They are monopoly instruments restricting useful research and therefore diminishing social welfare

Pressure back on using GURT technology

The use of Gene Use Restricting Technology (GURT), popularly known as the ‘terminator’ technology’, is being discussed again. The US under the Indo-US deal on agriculture is also putting pressure to change the IPR regime and labeling and other provisions for GE crops. GURT is in fact banned in India under the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act, 2001, but there is a lot of pressure globally including at the Biosafety Protocol meeting in Curitiba this year.

It has historically been well understood that farmers own not just the crops they harvest in one season, but the seeds needed to continue their occupation as well. But with the arrival of GURT, this understanding is put at risk. The technology - which allows farmers to grow only one crop from the seeds they purchase, but does not allow the farmer to save viable seed from his crop for the next sowing - was kept in cold storage after widespread outrage at its anti-farmer focus but it is back on the corporate agenda and awaiting adoption. GURT is an example of how genetic engineering has been used not to improve a crop or bring benefits to farmers but solely to enhance the control of the seed company over the variety they have bred.

GURT is the most stringent form of intellectual property rights, where the scientific process, not the legal, has been used to give the seed company complete control. The terminator technology obviates the patent system in establishing the monopoly of the seed company on the new seed.

In the GURT technology two gene systems have been brought together to produce seeds with an in built mechanism that aborts development of the embryo so that germination can not take place and the seed is rendered sterile. The self -destructing seeds are actually hybrids produced by hybridising two transgenic plants, each containing one of the two gene systems. To control the induction sterility, a chemical switch has been built in. Soaking the seeds in a chemical like tetracycline can activate this switch. Once the tetracycline soaks into the seed tissue, it switches on one of the gene systems, which sets in motion the chemical process, which will abort the embryo. So in practice, the seed company can produce as much of the seed as they want and just before selling it to the farmer, they can treat the seeds with tetracycline to switch on the sterility inducing gene system.

When technological change has the potential to put the livelihood or other interests of hundreds of millions of people at risk, it must be regulated differently from other products in a free market. While promoting innovation is a valuable goal for modern economies, such innovation would be self-defeating if it resulted in social or economic upheaval. This is precisely the risk now posed by genetically engineered crops.

This article appeared in India Together on 24 Sept 2006 -https://indiatogether.org/getech-agriculture/ 

📌 Biotech policy : task force report

(from the archives)

Suman Sahai comments on the recently released report of Task Force on Biotechnology policy.

The Centre’s Department of Agriculture & Cooperation had appointed a Task Force in May 2003 to examine Agbiotechnology and make recommendations for its implementation. The body headed by Dr. M S Swaminathan was given the following mandate: to formulate a long-term policy on applications of biotechnology in agriculture; make suggestions for harmonizing decision making; recommend a role for the Agriculture Ministry and generate awareness.

Released earlier this year, the importance of the recommendations of the Task Force lies in the fact that this is the first effort to formulate a policy. Civil society organizations have been frustrated in the past by the refusal of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) to engage in any dialogue on public concerns or be receptive to any suggestions for improving a clearly unsatisfactory system. The former head of DBT is famously on record for doggedly insisting that India did not need a biotechnology policy when all around her, from the most vocal protagonists to the most determined opponents, were demanding a national policy.

The task force process itself was somewhat participatory. NGOs, industry, academics and other stakeholders were consulted. The time frame was 3 months which was a limitation. The consultations were not as wide as I have seen for some other processes. The terms of reference of the task force did not include debate on the GM controversy itself, but rather how to improve the efficiency of Agbiotech. That was the limited mandate of the body.

One of the report’s basic recommendations is that the national policy should seek the ‘economic well-being of farm families, food security of the nation, health security of the consumer, protection of the environment and the security of our national and international trade’. If the recommendations of this Task Force are upheld, no policy implementation can deviate from these goals.

The report highlights the need to link transgenic research in India to the international market. Transgenic research should not be done on crops that we sell in the international market, like soybean, Basmati rice and Darjeeling tea. Readers will recall the hare brained schemes of the DBT to promote Bt Basmati and introduce the beta-carotene construct of Golden Rice into Basmati rice. Nobody seemed to be thinking that we are exporters of Basmati (and other) rice as well as soybean (to special niche markets) and that our major trading partners are all rejecting GM foods. So who would buy our Bt Basmati or our GM Soya?

The report is critical of the prevailing gung-ho climate when any proposal for research on a GM crop, however nonsensical the goal, is likely to get sanctioned, often at the cost of conventional research which is more likely to yield results of relevance. It recommends that all alternatives to GM technology should be examined and the GM route used only when other options are not available. There is an explicit injunction against using negative GM traits like herbicide tolerance that can reduce employment (by taking away the opportunity to earn wages by weeding) and impinge on rural livelihoods (by destroying vegetation that is used as nutritious leafy greens or fodder to support livestock).

The report says that our policy on transgenics should be sensitive to biodiversity conservation and the socio-economic context of our composite agrarian system. In other words, small farmer interests have to be protected. In recommending the breeding of both varieties and hybrids and supporting apomixis (asexual reproduction through seeds) as a strategy, the recommendation is clearly in favour of the farmers’ right to save seed from previous harvests.

The recommendation that Centres of Origin and diversity like the Jeypore tract for rice must be protected, is an important one. However the proposed mechanism for earmarking GM and non-GM zones does not appear to be feasible. The task force also did not look the implications of non-GM food preferences developing in the Indian domestic market in the same way that it has developed in the export markers. As a result it ends up advocating a policy of developing non-GM crops for export, but permitting GM crops for domestic consumers. If a country like India would do this, the cost of segregation would be high and in my opinion, segregation of GM and non-GM is practically impossible in India.

For example, if the cultivation of GM rice is permitted in certain areas but not in the diversity rich areas of Orissa, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh, there is no way of preventing GM rice landing up there. Foreign genes in that case are bound to move to wild relatives of rice in its centre of origin. We have seen the speed with which the illegal Bt cotton originally put out by Navbharat seed company has spread to almost all cotton growing areas, despite the fact that its planting is illegal. Similarly, contamination of native corn in Mexico has taken place inspite of the ban on the cultivation of GM corn in the country. Zoning or segregation is unlikely to work. The only way of protecting native germplasm from foreign genes with likely negative impacts is to disallow the GM version of that particular crop.

I have a disagreement on the edible vaccine strategy that forms part of the report. I do not believe India should invest in edible vaccines since it will be impossible to keep vaccine bearing fruit separate from ordinary fruits. Mixture with the food chain is inevitable since one bunch of bananas looks like another. It would be even harder to segregate grains. In the US, Starlink corn, which was not allowed as food but only animal feed, was found mixed up with food corn. In the Prodigene case in the US, a GM corn carrying pig vaccine was found mixed up with soybean for human use, showing segregation is not possible even in the highly regulated conditions of US agriculture. India should have a strict policy of allowing the expression of pharmaceutical molecules like vaccines only in non-edible plants.

With respect to regulation, the report has suggested much needed technical competence and transparency. I would have liked to see a greater role for civil society, as is the case in the Philippines and other ASEAN nations. The structure of the regulatory authority would benefit from greater autonomy, demonstrable competence and independence to inspire confidence. The authority should be able to not just assess Biosafety, environmental and long term ecological impact but also other aspects like social and economic impacts, particularly the impact on small farmers, of the introduction of a particular GM crop.

The Task Force report appears to be in favour of biotechnology because many submissions made by formal bodies and experts were overwhelmingly pro biotech.

This article appeared in India Together on 01 Sept 2004 -https://indiatogether.org/btechrept-agriculture/